The urban-to-rural gradient of land use change and impervious cover: a long-term trajectory for the city of Leipzig

Abstract

Urbanisation is arguably the most significant form of land use change as it has various impacts on the pattern, functionality and dynamics of landscapes. Such effects become particularly obvious if observed and analysed along an urban-to-rural gradient. This article presents a case study on long-term land use and impervious cover change along the urban-to-rural gradient in the German city of Leipzig – a special case because the urban region underwent dramatic societal changes during the past 100 years experiencing both world wars, socialism and transition to market economy. To depict this development we use small scale land use data based on topographic maps from 1870 to 2006. The results show that urbanisation is a strongly non-linear process. In summary, we found the urban-to-rural gradient had a strong tendency to decrease with regard to the percentage of impervious cover with a simultaneous increase of the total impervious cover. This trend is strengthened further by the fact that Leipzig has been growing little in terms of economy and population but rather experienced some form of de-densification in recent decades. The urban-to-rural gradient offers a promising approach to firstly integrate historical data into current land use change impact assessment and, secondly, to uncover effects of iterative and simultaneous phases of urban growth and decline.